UMass Amherst Broke the Guinness World Record For Largest Fruit Salad

by Steve Annear | September 3, 2013 1:31 pm

Photo via UMass Amherst

For the fourth time ever, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst put another record-breaker in the books.

As students shuffled back to campus over the weekend, they teamed up with staff members from the school, during the annual Labor Day barbecue, to create the earth’s largest bowl of fruit salad, weighing a whopping 15,000 pounds, securing the university a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.

“This exercise allows UMass Amherst to support the resiliency of the New England food system by using as much locally sourced fruit as possible,” said Ken Toong, executive director of auxiliary enterprises at UMass Amherst. “It also promotes sustainability and healthy eating, allows us to showcase regional cuisine, and helps build important connections within the UMass campus community. We used fruits from our student-run farm, the four permaculture gardens on campus, and from many local farmers.”

In honor of the 150th Anniversary of UMass Amherst this year, the school used 150 varieties of fruit for their concoction. The enormous salad contained the following:

3,640 pounds of apples450 pounds of mangos

1,297 pounds of berries, including blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries

It also had bananas, cherries, mint, grapefruit, peaches, pineapple, and plums, according to school officials.

Once all of the fruit was inside the customized four-foot high reinforced swimming pool, it was weighed using a truck scale. A Guinness Book of World Records worker was on hand to tally the weight, and bear witness to the fruit mound’s championship win.

According to a statement from the school, the record-breaking fruit salad was the work of a team of culinary experts including celebrity chef Jet Tila of the Food Network, Willie Sng, UMass Amherst’s executive chef, and Oliver de Volpi, head chef at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who set the previous record of 11,197 pounds of fruit salad last year.

After securing the title, people at the annual barbecue got a chance to eat the fruit, while large portions of the salad was also transported to dining commons and other locations on campus, so it wouldn’t go to waste.

This wasn’t the first time the school set a record of the sort. In the past, they have created giant bowls of stew and soup, putting the university’s name amongst some of the weirdest titles in the world. UMass took the record for the world’s largest stir-fry at 4,010 pounds, and last year for the world’s largest New England seafood stew, weighing in at over 6,656 pounds.